Baidu Announces New ‘Quantum Leaf’ Platform

Quantum Leap may have wrapped in 1993, but Quantum Leaf—Baidu’s new foray into cloud-based quantum computing—is just getting started.

I talked with Siraj Khaliq, a data scientist-turned-venture capitalist with Atomico, about the implications.

That’s quantastic

Let’s rewind: Quantum computers can solve problems in linear time that would take classic computers exponential time, says Khaliq. That’s a game changer for machine learning, finance, chemistry, and more.

• Example: If we want batteries that last a month instead of a day, says Khaliq, quantum computing can supersede classic computing power to “simulate battery tech at scale” and yield new insights.

Baidu announced its platform last week, joining the likes of Microsoft, IBM, and Rigetti Computing. In May, Baidu open sourced Paddle Quantum, its toolkit for quantum ML.

• With the U.S.-China trade war heating up, it’s no surprise China wants its own horse in this race. Its $10 billion quantum research lab—the world’s largest—is set to open this year.

Bottom line: “The key takeaway is: Quantum is coming of age,” says Khaliq. Recent advances in cloud computing and quantum software are enabling the tech. Still, it’ll take ~quant a lot~ of $ to arrive at commercially useful quantum computers.